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[csziggy]

12. I'm late to welcome you, but you've jumped into a whole new obsession!

I do have some recommendations for free software.

The most basic one is Personal Ancestral File, better known as PAF, available free from the LDS: https://familysearch.org/products/ It's very simple to operate and a lot of genealogists have been using it for practically forever. It does try to get you to share your information with the LDS Family Search web site but does not force you to.

Legacy has a basic, free version that is very nice: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/ They do send out emails but they are not very intrusive about them. In fact, some of their emails have links to online webinars and articles that have good information about how to improve your genealogy research.

Both of those programs can export GEDcom files, the standard format to exchange genealogy data among programs, so if you upgrade to a better program someday you can simply export from the free programs and import into the new one.

I used PAF for many years then tried out Legacy Basic for a while. I settled on The Master Genealogist as my main program since it is so rigorous about nagging for documentation but I recently bought Family Tree Maker 2012 to make it easier to coordinate my data with what I have on Ancestry.com. But linking directly to Ancestry is a sure fire way to get errors introduced into your tree as I have found out the hard way, so I keep my file in The Master Genealogist updated manually and consider it my primary database.

Document everything you find - I keep digital copies of everything (both what I have found online and the old data my grandmother and Mom found decades ago) on my computer and print out hard copies in case my computer crashes - and to share with my Mom who will never look at genealogy on the computer. Don't accept online trees as the truth until and unless you find supporting documentation. Lots of people are putting unverified information out there and it can lead you far astray.

I have a world subscription to Ancestry - if you want me to see what might be available for the area your family came from in Italy, let me know. I can take a look to see if they have put anything up.